Sunday, November 27, 2016

A new study has been
released announcing the discovery of almost 1,500 new viruses! These viruses
were discovered by research team that collected ~220 species of invertebrates
in China from both land and water.

After collecting the
invertebrates, researchers extracted their RNA and then sequenced all of the
genomes of extracted RNA in “libraries”. These libraries can categorize the RNA
as being viral genomes, and if so, whether the genome is part of a previously
discovered virus or a new virus.asAs a result of this sequencing, the
researchers realized that they had discovered nearly 1,500 new virus species!

The implications of these
findings are tremendous. First of all, the diversity of the viral species was
magnificent; some of them were particularly unusual, and would lack a spot on
the current “viral family tree” and present classification systems. This emphasizes to
me just how much we still have yet to learn regarding viruses, both
invertebrate viruses and human viruses alike. Furthermore, the sequenced RNA
also showed evidence that viruses have in fact been trading segmentsof genetic material for generations, and
recombined these genome units in different orders and with quantities present to create different viruses. A
final mind-blowing discovery found from this study is that human, and other vertebrate viruses “derived from those present in
invertebrates” (Prof Edward Holmes from the University of Sydney). This
discovery seems tremendous to me – that most of the prevalent viruses that
impact our everyday life in fact originated from invertebrates! I wonder if
researchers will discover new viruses that infect humans that also infect invertebrates;
further, I am curious to think about whether or not researchers could lookat invertebrate
adaptations to viruses, and see if perhaps theseadaptations could aid researchers in finding
vaccines / treatments for similar strands of viruses that affect humans!!